Mobile Banking Match 4: Royal Bank of Canada vs TD Canada Trust

For the past few weeks we have been running a brand new series on BankNerd, which is none other than the mobile banking app matches.

The first three matches were great, in the first match we saw the Bank of Montreal (BMO) face-off against the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC, in the second match we saw Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) go up against Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) and in the most recent match, ING Direct Canada went up against Scotiabank.

Today’s match is going to be great, especially since we have gone into a whole new round. The two mobile banking apps facing off are none other than RBC’s Mobile Banking App and  TD’s mobile banking app.

I have prepared a comparison of what these two mobile banking apps have to offer:

Functionality	TD Mobile Banking App	RBC Mobile Banking App
View Account Balances
View Account Details*
View Transaction History and Payment History
Pay Bills
Interac Email Transfers
Locate Branches & ATMs
Blackberry Mobile Banking app
iPhone Mobile Banking app
Android Mobile Banking app
Mobile Banking Browser

Appearance	TD Mobile Banking App	RBC Mobile Banking App
Easy to Use
Descriptived
Colors and Design

As you can see, both of these mobile banking apps offer the same features; what might come at a shock to a lot of readers is the fact that RBC now offers an Android mobile banking app. Yes that is not a mistake, RBC recently launched an RBC Android app a little while ago.

How do these mobile banking apps differ?

Honestly, both apps offer virtually the same features; there really is not much of a difference between these two mobile banking apps.

That being said, they do offer several features that the other does not offer.

TD for example offers clients the ability to monitor their investments by checking account balances, list orders, holdings and activity. This is all done through their TD Waterhouse side of the mobile banking app. You are able to log in through your WebBroker Connect ID. With that said, you are also able to view and manage watch lists and get real-time quotes for stocks, ETF and mutual funds.

Don’t get me wrong, RBC does offer several great features that TD does not. RBC offers users the ability to have access to their mortgage payment calculator and foreign exchange

The problem with these features is that it is not actually embedded into the app. When you click the “rates and tools” section in the mobile app, you are in fact redirected to your browser where the tools have been made accessible.

These tools are great, however I would prefer it if it was all held within the mobile app.

Now both mobile banking apps offer the ability to store additional card numbers on the app, however they do so completely differently. As you can see below, TD does this through a drop down menu:

RBC on the other hand takes you to a separate page where the information is stored:

Personally, I prefer the drop down menu because it makes it a lot quicker when selecting the card number.

Now aesthetically, these apps are great, but I am going to be honest and love how bright the green is on TD’s mobile banking app. Their recent colour change is great; I love how fresh and bright the new green makes it.

What can both these mobile banking apps do to improve?

One feature that I wish both these mobile banking apps had was the ability to add Interac e-transfer payees to your registered list.

As it stands, you need to log into your online banking (via a computer) and add the email in through that method.

Personally, it takes away from the experience of “mobile” banking. Then again, this is just my opinion on the matter. Other banks do offer the ability to add recipients, so that tells me it is possible, it just might be taking a while for these other banks to catch up.

With that being said, the winner of this mobile banking app match is none other than TD. Now I am not an app developer, not know any of the guidelines that is involved in making an app, but I do believe that the better app is TD. I love the colors, and the overall functionality of the app. There are improvements that can be made, but for now I do find it to be the better app.

What do you think of these two mobile banking apps?